Winter Moon by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page A

women like anything other than property to be sequestered away from the eyes of all other men. If he regarded her in the same light as a Jendaran bride, she’d find herself confined to these rooms with a guard on the door, never seeing anyone but her maid except during Massid’s…conjugal visits. Not that she was particularly afraid of those , but being confined to two rooms with no company but a maid would drive her mad.
    Although the traditional guard is a eunuch, I don’t think he brought one with him, and I don’t foresee anyone of the keep men volunteering for the operation…
    It would also leave Massid and her father free to do whatever it was they were planning without anyone at all able to discern what it was.
    Then, when spring came and the sea calmedenough to travel on, Massid would probably send her back to Jendara, which would be even worse. She’d be a captive among his flock of wives and concubines, none of whom would speak her language, all of whom would probably be hostile. If she wasn’t driven to insanity by such imprisonment, one or more of them would probably try to poison her out of jealousy if Massid showed the slightest bit of preference for her. Travelers’ tales of war among the women of a Jendaran chareen might be partially apocryphal, but where there was smoke, there was usually flame somewhere about.
    Not a good option, for herself or her King.
    Next choice—try to escape.
    She wouldn’t get more than a single chance at that, and she would need to be very careful about the timing. I won’t get a chance at all once there’s a wedding, so it will have to be before then if I try it. That much she was sure of—or at least, she wouldn’t get a chance unless something completely catastrophic happened that threw the entire keep into an uproar and removed the probable guard from her door. So any attempt would have to take place after she learned as much as she could, but before a wedding.
    The autumn and winter storms were on their way, and both Ferson and Massid must be as aware of that as she was, so whatever her father and the Prince were planning was probably intended to take advantage of the storms. But those same storms would also make getting to and from the keep from the landward side quite difficult. Not impossible, but ittook a very determined traveler to brave the wind, snow, and above all, the ice storms that pounded the coastline by winter. If she was to escape, she’d have to plan things to a nicety, and she would have to have a great deal of luck. The closest place likely to take her in was one of the two nearest sea-keeps, but there was no telling whether or not Ferson was including the Lord of Lornetel and the Lord of Man-deles in his plans. If she fled to either of them, she might find herself handed back over. So the safest direction to flee would be inland, and it would take her at least twice as long to get to another inland keep as it would to get to the nearest sea-keeps.
    Escape was not a good option. It might be the only one, but it was not much better than going through with the wedding.
    Whatever the King and Countess suspected, it was nothing like this, or surely they’d have given her more warnings—and more of the sort of arcane aid that resided beneath the floor of the wardrobe.
    Nevertheless, there had been a lot of thought put into this plot, whatever it was.
    He must have been planning this for a while—but not for too long, or he would have summoned me earlier. This scheme could not have been hatched before this time last year.
    The moment she realized that, she was certain of something else.
    This had not been Lord Ferson’s idea. Or at least, it didn’t originate with him.
    It wasn’t that her father wasn’t intelligent, becausehe was. He wasn’t clever , he wasn’t good at coming up with cunning plans, but he was intelligent. He knew how to read men, to the point where